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More civilian deaths in Afghanistan

AM - Monday, 21 July , 2008 08:24:00

Reporter: Alison Caldwell

TONY EASTLEY: Civilian casualties at the hands of foreign forces is a hugely sensitive issue in Afghanistan.

In the past President Hamid Karzai has said no civilian casualty is acceptable.

Overnight at least 13 Afghan police and civilians were killed in two incidents involving international forces. In one clash both sides mistook the other for Taliban militants.

Alison Caldwell reports.

ALISON CALDWELL: Confusion reigned when the fighting took place in the Farah Province in the early hours of Sunday morning, Afghanistan time; police opened fire on a convoy of Afghan national army and foreign troops believing they were Taliban militants.

Hearing gunfire, many locals reportedly rushed in to support the police. Once the fighting was over, four Afghan police and five civilians were dead.

The Deputy Governor of Farah Province said the foreign troops hadn't told the police they were coming.

Elsewhere the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force said it had "accidentally" killed at least four civilians in the eastern Paktika Province, close to the Pakistan border.

In a statement, ISAF said a unit fired two mortar rounds which landed nearly a kilometre away from the intended target. ISAF said it deeply regretted the accident.

The incidents will reinforce Afghan perceptions that foreign troops are doing more harm than good. The NATO-led force has denied Afghan claims that air strikes last week killed more than 60 Afghan civilians, many of them women and children.

Charles Kupchan is a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor of International Relations.

CHARLES KUPCHAN: I think most indicators suggest that the situation is getting worse not better, and clearly the Taliban has regained a foothold in the country. The death toll to civilian Afghani's as well as to foreign fighters is on the rise and now there is growing concern about the degree to which the Taliban is operating, almost with a free hand in the borderlands in western Pakistan.

ALISON CALDWELL: Do you think the answer is for America to send more troops into Afghanistan, a surge as it did in Iraq?

CHARLES KUPCHAN: No question that more foreign troops are needed in the country. The NATO force is sizeable but most NATO members have caveats on their national contingents. Those caveats prevent them from getting into the fight.

They tend to be in the northern part of the country doing reconstruction; peace-keeping; force protection, but a very few number of countries are actually in the south and the east where the counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency operations are continuing.